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He did
not know until he arrived that the farm was home to 3,000 hives of
honey bees. “I got there during harvest, so it was a good time to see
how the honey was extracted and how to care for the bees. That’s when I
really got interested in bees,” he recalled during an interview at his
apiary in Conference, St. Andrew, which he operates with his wife Alice.
When
he returned to Grenada, he approached local banks for funds to
establish an apiary. The responses were negative. Windel turned to
Mother Nature. “I went in the wild and started to collect a few
colonies for myself,” he said; a practice that involved constructing
his own “queen catcher” box, cutting into the wild hive and enticing
the queen into the box so that the other bees would follow. A pilot
project organised by the Agency for Rural Transformation
(ART)
provided Windel with two hives, as well as a learning opportunity at
the Barbados Institute of Management and Productivity.
During
the next decade Windel expanded his Spice Isle Apiary to 100 hives.
Like the majority of Grenada’s 50 plus beekeepers, Windel subsidises
his apiary with other income, being an electrician by trade. He became
the first president of the newly established Grenada Association of
Beekeepers in 1998, which developed programmes to facilitate increased
honey production, in collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture,
ART and the Inter
American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture
(IICA). Working with the Ministry of Agriculture, the Association
receives an annual subvention of $15,000 to maintain its secretariat in
Grenville and utilises duty free concessions to import equipment and
materials at reduced costs to members.
When Hurricane Ivan
devastated Grenada in 2004, almost 70 percent of the 1,500 hives in the
Country were destroyed. USAID responded by donating 500 hives and 500
queen bees to the Association. “Ivan set me back to almost zero. I was
ready to give up, but USAID gave the Association some assistance and
that helped get me back on my feet.”
Today with 60 hives in five
locations, 34-year old Windel is optimistic about the future. Moreover,
he is hopeful that, through the Association, beekeepers can begin to
tap overseas markets through a central marketing system under one
national brand. |
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